Muslim Community Association (Santa Clara, Santa Clara County, CA)

Santa Clara has long been home to an organization which had aspirations to expand their operations in the city.  They formulated a plan and presented it to the city council.  Despite a small but vocal opposition, they were successful in their cause and began building a behemoth-sized facility.

I'm speaking, of course, of the San Francisco 49ers, whose billionaire owners have put Santa Clara taxpayers on the hook for paying off an $850 million dollar loan and have taken $30 million from the County, $30 million which could have been used to educate our children but hey, football 8 days a year is more important.  In exchange, the San Francisco 49ers will be changing their name to the Santa Clara 49ers.  Wait, they won't?  The San Francisco 49ers of Santa Clara, then.  No?  Wow, the taxpayers are getting a raw deal, aren't they?

I bring this up because the main issue surrounding the stadium was the financing (along with the noise, traffic and shootings which come with NFL games).  Mosques, especially large ones like MCA, face similar quandaries when it comes raising money for their programs and facilities.  MCA, being a Muslim-focused organization, isn't eligible to apply to the vast majority of foundations in the United States for funding.  They can't apply for funding from abroad in a post-9/11 world because who knows what kind of terror connections the government will find.  They're then forced to rely on individual fundraising to meet their goals, which has been tough since the Great Recession hit.

The Silicon Valley boomtimes, however, are back, somewhat.  The MCA is seeking $1 million dollars to purchase a facility to expand its Islamic school and build a youth and senior center.  It's a noble cause and it's something the community sorely needs.  I say the boomtimes are back (somewhat) because they began the fund-a-need at $100,000 and it took someone all of 10 seconds to commit it.  My jaw dropped; I've been fundraising in Richmond for too long, clearly.  There were comparatively very few mid-range donations ($10,000-$50,000) but they still ended up with $300,000 in pledges.

The bid of the night, however, came from one Waxmaster Will.  Verily, he exalted the Almighty, led by example and gave unto the cause from his own wealth.  And it was good.

Due to the fundraising, taraweeh started rather late.  The ball didn't get rolling till around 11, but it was sublime as per usual.  I've been around the Bay more than a few times at this point and I still maintain that this is the best taraweeh here.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not denigrating the teenage huffaz who sprout from the local Quran schools.  There's just something about the timber and deepness of Sheikh Jibreel's voice that the youngsters can't match because their voices haven't completely dropped yet.

One wonders if they're using Muslim labor to put the finishing touches on the expansion. It's good to give Muslims business, but doing construction work during Ramadan in the summertime must be extremely hard.

Date Visited: August 4, 2012

Location:
3003 Scott Boulevard
Santa Clara, 95054

Tag-team taraweeh: Nope.

Qirat: Lovely.

Size of congregation: In the hundreds

Capacity of center: In the thousands

Parking: The masjid has a good-sized parking lot, but there's also plenty of street parking.  Lousy Muslims also park illegally in the neighbors' parking lots.

Mihrab: Yes

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Not enough if the center is at capacity.

Building: Old Hewlitt-Packard R&D facility.  The masjid has its eye on a facility next door to expand the school and build a new senior and youth center.

Friendliness towards women: Women dominate the volunteer corps here.  There hasn't been a female president here yet, but I'm sure there will be in the next 10 years.

Friendliness of congregation: It's really rather quite large, so it can be a little intimidating.  In this sea of strangers, though, you'll find plenty of friendly faces.

For more on MCA, read my previous years' posts.

Muslim Community Association of the San Francisco Bay Area (Santa Clara)

It's fitting that the first mosque I visited in 2010 was MCA, and I'm wrapping up this quest with a final blurb about my beloved hometown masjid.  Last night was the 29th night of Ramadan, the night MCA finishes the Quran in taraweeh.  They are the only large mosque in the area which wraps up on the 29th (all others finish on the 27th) so the masjid always, always gets packed with people desirous of catching a khatam with Sheikh Jibreel.  I've never really seen it this crowded, though:

Two of dozens of shoe shelves in the building.  I'm most impressed by the fact that there aren't shoes all over the place, though that may be because of the volunteers' vigilance.

Welcome to the largest prayer hall in the Bay Area.

The hall pictured above can hold 1,000 people. The women's hall directly behind me I believe can hold a little more than 500 people. There were men and women praying in the community hall to the left of me, and in the annex to the right. I think it's reasonable to say that around 3,000 people were in attendance. Folks who claim 10,000 people were here last night are Glenn-Becking their numbers. Given that the largest hall in the building can hold (only) 1,000 people, how on earth could 10,000 people have been here last night?

I came here last night because it had been too long since I'd heard Sheikh Jibreel and his famous khatam (you can only hear it in-person, he disallows recordings). It's also been a very long Ramadan for me and I needed to finish this quest in a place where I felt at home. I am grateful to the rising stars (Belmont, Pleasanton and San Ramon) for fostering environments which made me feel comfortable, but there's nothing quite like your childhood mosque.

When I look at this men's prayer hall, I don't just see the minbar and mihrab in the right corner. I see the workout room with punching bags which used to be in its place before the remodeling project, and whose industrial-grade carpet gave me rug burn. Looking to the left, I see the old loading dock, with its cold tile floor and filthy walls, which is now a banquet hall where many of my friends have shackled balls and chains to their feet. Down the hall is the women's restroom into which I was ushered as a child when I split my head open on a file cabinet. I have literally spilled blood, sweat and tears here.

If you read through my archives, you'll see I'm at times being hard on MCA, but it's because I love this place that I'm so critical of it. Every time I saw something wonderful and replicable in another mosque, I wondered why the MCA wasn't doing it. I also felt a stab of frustration every time I perceived a misstep by the mosque leadership. However, I never meant to discredit their work, because if you know what I know and what the community had to go through to even get this place built, you'd know they always have the best intentions in mind.

This place would not function without volunteers, and I don't mean just the leadership, who I can assure you are not paid for their service. Last night the volunteer corps blew me away; here was a cadre of people willingly sacrificing their ability to pray taraweeh to ensure 3,000 or so eager worshippers would all get a chance to enjoy the beautiful taraweeh. Without their support, I can assure you folks' third-world instincts would have taken over and fire code violations would have been the least of the masjid's problems. May God bless everyone who put in even one hour to help make this Ramadan possible.

Muslim Community Association (Santa Clara)

The organization’s full title is MCA-SFBA: the Muslim Community Association of the San Francisco Bay Area. With such a lofty name, is it any surprise that as a young child I thought that this was the only mosque in the Bay Area? Judging by what I have seen this year and observed last year, even MCA-Santa Clara County would be a stretch, as this mosque is not representative of all the communities here.

What this community can say, however, is it has the largest space of any mosque in the Bay Area. More people come for Friday prayers here than any other mosque, and I say that because they have 3 services: 12:15, 1:30 and 2:30, even during the months when the time for Friday prayers doesn’t start till after 1:00. Thanks to MCA’s adherence to multiple schools of law, as opposed to only one, they’ve been able to take advantage of a fatwa which allows them to start jummah before the technical time for that prayer. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, because obviously there’s a demand for more than one jummah, I’m just saying this practice would not fly at a smaller mosque because they tend to have more homogenous congregations which strictly follow one madhab. Being able to take advantage of multiple madhabs is one of the many beautiful things about having a large community.

However, MCA’s size is a double-edged sword. The Friday services are popular because despite all the tech giants’ best efforts to outsource everything to India (thank you, Clinton), lots of Muslims still work around the Santa Clara area. However, the night prayers, and particularly the taraweeh prayers these days, aren’t as popular as they used to be because folks got tired of the traffic and incessant fundraising (just two of the many reasons, I’m sure). You can’t blame the mosque for the incessant fundraising because the more people use your facilities, the more money you need (last I checked MCA asks for a donation of $125 per family to cover Ramadan expenses while SBIA asks a mere $20). However, the more fundraising you do, the less likely people are to come to your mosque regularly enough to donate. It’s a delicate balancing act and the MCA’s donor base has shrunk as the wealthier communities like Saratoga and the Blossom Valley neighborhood of San Jose have established their own little masajid. It’s kind of a shame that the community worked so hard to raise the money for a humungous mosque when it turns out folks would prefer to attend smaller local mosques, just like they did “back home.”

Tonight was one of those fundraiser nights. As a nonprofit employee, I totally get why they would fundraise tonight. First of all, the congregation is never bigger than it is during Ramadan. Second, it was a Saturday night, so the hall was especially full. As a congregant facing a long drive back to Richmond, however, I was annoyed, because the longer the fundraiser, the later I’d be able to complete my taraweeh prayers. Had I known they would be fundraising I would have stuck to a smaller, local mosque. See how the MCA is slowly losing its donor base? I can guarantee I’m not the only one who was thinking these thoughts tonight.

I don’t know what the future holds for MCA, but I can guarantee the notion that the MCA was going to turn into a sprawling complex that could hold thousands of worshippers at once has gone by the wayside. It’s apparent that that’s not part of the vision anymore, as construction workers are currently putting the finishing touches on what is being called the final phase of the remodeling project.

This phase, of course, is the one which called for the MCA to have a brand-spanking new minaret. Fine, it’s built, the money was earmarked for it, whatever. My issue with the construction, after having seen the new addition, is there’s no way for one to get from the new annex to the community hall without either taking off your shoes or walking around the building, which isn’t the best option during inclement weather. Now worshippers who want to go from the bookstore to the community hall, as an example, will have to take off their shoes and carry them through the men’s prayer hall instead being able to keep the shoes on and cut through the prayer hall via a designated passage. It doesn’t sound like a big deal now, but especially since the after-jummah crowd (should) like to shop at the bookstore and most of the parking is on the other side of the building, I predict it’ll become a problem in the cold winter months when folks are less inclined to walk around the building. Taking off and putting on shoes takes a bit longer than most people realize, and if upwards of 3,000 people are attending jummah, the last thing the mosque needs is another factor which adds to the human traffic.

Of course, this is a non-issue if folks are okay with shopping at the bookstore in their socks or bare feet if their shoes happen to be on the other side of the men’s prayer hall, which is actually not very far-fetched.

I do apologize if folks are having a hard time visualizing this. Imagine a lobby in which you have to take your shoes off to cross from the elevators to the offices on the other side. It’d be a lot more convenient to take a path through the lobby in which you could keep your shoes on, right?

The minaret, or as I like to think of it, 64 feet of wasted airspace.  At least Sather Tower on the UC Berkeley campus doubles as a virtually-fireproof vault for important papers and dinosaur bones, what purpose does this thing serve?  The new annex, though, is very nice, I was impressed by the tile selection and placement.  That is money well-spent.  As you can tell by the picture, the finishing touches still need to be placed on the exterior.

Date Visited: August 13, 2011

Location:
3003 Scott Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054

Tag-team taraweeh: No

Qirat: Shaikh Jibreel is my only AAA-rated imam. All others are AA+ at best.

Size of congregation: hundreds

Capacity of center: 1,000 without violating any fire codes, maybe a little more

Parking: Lot and street. Muslims insist on parking in the neighboring companies’ lots, which upsets me very much. There’s nothing wrong with parking on the street a little farther away if it’ll mean you’re not breaking the law on your way to prayer. The parking issue is so bad the mosque leadership has a blowup of a letter hanging on the wall, in which a property owner complained that so many Muslims had parked illegally in her lot that a potential tenant had no space to park when they came to check out an office. Absolutely ridiculous. Tell you what, if the MCA fined every Muslim who parked illegally they’d be able to reach their Ramadan fundraising goal of $1.55 million like that.

Mihrab: Yes

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Yes

Building: Former Hewlitt-Packard R&D lab, if they saw it now they’d be shocked to see what the Moslems have done with the space. It’s changed that much.

Friendliness towards women: Definitely gotten better over the years, probably as the mosque leadership matured and was influenced more by the American-born generation.

Friendliness of congregation: It’s a huge mosque, so it is what you make of it. You can absolutely be that guy who strikes up random conversations with folks, or you could be left alone because the hall is large enough for you to blend into the background.

Muslim Community Association of the San Francisco Bay Area

Date visited: Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Location: Santa Clara, CA
3003 Scott Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 9505

Number of imams: 1. Sheikh Jibreel is a stud because he's one of the few imams in the area who leads 20 rakats by himself.

Qirat (recitation): Excellent.  My standard for recitations.

Size of congregation: Large. Easily a thousand people were in attendance

Capacity of center: Large. I believe this center can hold up to 2,500 people with ease

Parking: Ample. Thanks to its suburban commercial location, there's plenty of street parking in addition to a good-sized parking lot.

Mihrab: Yes

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Plentiful

Building: Converted HP R&D center

Friendliness towards women: Good. The women are made to pray a separate room, but through the magic of one-way mirrors, they are able to see the front of the mosque and theoretically the imam while he's leading the prayers.

Friendliness of congregation: It's very large, so it can be hard to take initiative and approach people. The mosque board is very welcoming, however, so it's easy to make friends through the many events the mosque hosts.

Please tell me if there's any categories on which you'd like me to report.

This is my home mosque, so I really can't write about any first impressions. I can only comment on my displeasure with the direction the remodeling project is taking. For some reason, the powers that be decided it was more essential to build a relatively expensive minaret instead of adding something more functional, like a second men's bathroom.